Cleaning up Turkish power

The Turkish energy market has just entered a rare phase that offers opportunities to investors that only exist roughly once a decade, and Aygen Yayikoglu, managing partner of private equity firm Crescent Capital, is set to leap on the opportunity.

“There is room in the market for a renewable consolidation strategy where one can put together a decent portfolio,” Yayikoglu told EMEA Finance. “This didn’t exist three years ago and won’t exist in three years.”

Now is the time to strike, Yayikoglu reckons, because Turkish renewables and infrastructure projects from tenders held at the start of the decade are only just now starting to become operational.

“The stock was not there five years ago,” said Yayikoglu, who explains that the plan is to pick renewable assets such as solar and wind plants up early in their operational life cycle while agreements with the Turkish ministry of energy to buy the power are firmly in place, run them for a few years and then sell them on to long-term investors.